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Show 1889.] ON THE INTESTINAL CONVOLUTIONS IN BIRDS. 303 the ocelli, a black spot on each side of the frontal ocellus, a black stripe before it, and a short stripe bordering the inner orbits; the upper mouth-parts are also almost entirely black. Thorax buff, transversely striated, with a broad green stripe on each side of the dorsal carina, and a narrower bronzed shoulder-stripe, showing green in certain lights, beneath. Legs buff, clothed with long fine black bristles; femora with a black line beneath ; tarsi black. Abdomen buff, bronzed above, except at the sutures. Wings hyaline, slightly clouded at the tips; fore wings with 14 and hind wings with 15 postnodal cross-nervures ; pterostigma large, covering 3 or 3| cells. Hab. Sarawak, Borneo ( Wallace). Appears to be allied to L. viridula, Ramb., but much larger. 4. O n the Taxonomie Value of the Intestinal Convolutions in Birds. By H A N S G A D O W , Ph.D., M.A., Strickland Curator and Lecturer on the Advanced Morphology of Vertebrata iu the University of Cambridge. [Received May 1, 1889.] (Plate XXXII.) In 1879 I published, in the 'Jenaische Zeitschrift' 1, two lengthy articles on the digestive system of birds, and I laid particular stress upon the convolutions of the small intestine, i. e. upon the mode in which this part of the alimentary canal is stowed away in the abdominal cavity. Accounts of these convolutions are exceedingly meagre, and this is all the more surprising as Cuvier long ago drew attention to the remarkable diversity which prevails in the arrangement of the intestinal folds. However, there are only a few dozen birds described in his ' Leeons d'Anatomie Comparee,' no generalizing conclusions are drawn, and with few exceptions (MacGillivray) this part of descriptive ornithotomy has slept ever since. M y former researches were based upon the examination of about 200 different birds, an ample material, but not large enough to warrant all the taxonomie conclusions which I then drew, especially as these were marred by the fetters of certain antiquated traditions, now fortunately superseded. In preparing the account of the alimentary canal of birds for Bronn's ' Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs,' I have recently had occasion once more to take up this question on a much broader basis and in a more elaborate way. 1 therefore take the opportunity to lay before the Society a condensed account of the taxonomie value of the intestinal convolutions in birds. 1 " Versuch einer vergleichenden Anatomie des Verdauungssystemes der Voegel," Jenaische Zeitschrift fur Naturwissenschaft, xiii. pp. 92-117, 339-403, pis. iv.-xi. & xvi. |
